the holy dark was moving, too
by Phoebe Dynamite
Summary: How the Castle family grew by three. Two-parter.


For an instant, when she wakes up to the blackness, she thinks that it's last time.

She thinks she is alone in the middle of an old cabin tucked far away into the woods off a hundred unremarkable roads, away from the sniper who made an attempt for her life but also away from _him_. She wakes up and immediately chokes on all the pain that smothers her – the physical: the burning, shredding, near-constant attack of her body against itself, simultaneously succumbing and fighting every single second, dragging her into and then yanking her out of shallow, haunted sleep – and the emotional: the fear that never, ever abates, that he is far, that he is dead, that he is _gone_.

She wakes and it's entirely lightless, but after the razorblade-swallow that is encountering her reality, she feels the leonine pound of her heart and remembers. Really remembers. This isn't like that _other time_. Somehow, against all odds, she has lived through two shootings… and more importantly, so has he.

And he's out in the living room. Mere feet away. Sleeping on the couch because it's the one place the last few days that he can even find a moment's rest, lying on his back on a piece of furniture so deflated and stiff.

Her heart is in her throat, the hammering suppressing a call for him that is as instinctual to her throat as breathing. Her body is on fire, just like it has been for the two weeks since she was finally released from the hospital, but it's also completely incendiary for him. Because they have barely been allowed to touch, her wounds too fickle in their healing. And she woke up and thought she was alone and it was years ago, before the all-consuming happiness that they birthed in a storm, before, when he didn't know that she loved him back, the specter of his death haunting her…

He's alive, mere feet away.

"Cas-"

He's not feet away. Suddenly there's a whining creak from the old floorboard and the very barest hint of an outline, black on more black, to go along with the heated, familiar weight pressing down on her mattress and into her side. She gasps, but he smothers the sound with his lips.

"Baby," he breathes into her mouth. She can taste the persistent sheen of sweat always lining his upper lip. She can feel the sharpness of his stubble when she instinctually presses her palms to his cheeks. "Need you. Need you, Kate."

She needs him, too. Every doctor would advise against it – they haven't been cleared for this kind of activity – and she thinks that maybe she can feel the strain of it already on her overworked heart, but she also knows that he has always elicited intense reactions from that particular organ. It could almost be like he's coming home from a book tour, sneaking into the loft in the middle of night and crawling over her mostly naked body, surprising her, enflaming her. It could even be like the many nights that she was here – here before him, here without him – that she imagined him walking through that door, dropping to his knees, his stare boring into her mercilessly, and running his mouth over every broken and bruised part of her, bringing her back to life. She wouldn't have had to summon him and break through her cowardice and fragility; he would be Castle, and barge in, and do what he wanted, and it would be everything because he would just _know_ how much she needed him.

She needs him, too. She doesn't care about the shards of glass prying her abdomen apart or the watery tension in her arm and leg muscles, not when he is alive and on top of her and breaking through the hard casing in which this last battle has left her cocooned. She has to do this _again_ , goddammit, but never again. Never, ever again. They lived through close-range shootings in their own home, and there is nothing on earth that would make her risk their life together – the only life she wants – after that.

She reaches into his drawstring pajama pants and guides his shiver-inducing hardness without preamble to where she needs him. She's wearing one of his t-shirts, doesn't even need to raise the hem. He stretches her in the first way that's brought her pleasure since before the endless physical therapy sessions. It infuses her pain instead of blotting it out, but she doesn't care. She's holding onto him by the nape of his neck and opening her mouth towards the ceiling, because he's moving fast and w _ell_. She's arching her back without care of the cost. And Castle is thrusting in a way that only he can do and she can understood, like he needs to plunge into her over and over until he's certain she's really there, but also with a remarkable degree of intimacy for a desperately rutting man. His hips piston, but his touch is soft and exploratory, his moans both aroused and beseeching, the trail of his lips a pathway set down by a lover who knows every inch of his wife and what she likes. And what she likes is _this,_ having her life again, even for a moment, even in the dark.

"No more, Kate" he carves into her throat with the edges of his teeth. "No more waiting. No more wasting time." He sucks on the taut skin under her jaw and she lets out a long, unchecked moan. "No more of anything without you."

She means to reply, because it's exactly how she feels, too, like she never wants to go another second without him looking at her and smiling at her and touching her, but all she has are cries of ecstasy as he rapidly transforms her from a lucky-to-be-alive victim to a woman, _his_ wife, the woman who shot his attacker and was prepared to die beside him on the kitchen floor. The wife who wants so much more with her husband.

So they give each other more.

* * *

It feels impossible, the doctor's voice drowned out as soon as the one Very Important Word leaves her lips. Utterly impossible, a dream that should have been blinked out of existence for good that night in their kitchen. But it's not impossible, apparently. It's actually a miracle, the odds beaten yet again.

It's a miracle, and it stuns like one, but then again there is an instantaneous bloom of certainty that follows. Certainty and _rightness_. The impossible has been made possible, because that's what they do. She looks over at her husband and cries at the tears in his eyes.

It could have happened before that final showdown. She can think of a number of times in the two weeks beforehand that were vigorous, memorable, gait-altering, even potentially life-changing. But really, she knows. She doesn't even have to have the doctor confirm. That night in the cabin, her body had been so depleted of anything good and normal – including birth control – too inhospitable for new life. And yet.

He's kissing her. Right in the middle of her doctor's office while the woman's still talking. Kissing her and smiling and banding his arms around her waist to spin her in uncontainable joy. Just like she always imagined he would when this moment finally arrived.

* * *

A/N: Lovely readers, your thoughts - as always - are appreciated. Characters aren't mine; owed to the lyrical genius of Leonard Cohen.


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